"For instance, is it not nonsense to compare the charge for dinner at the company cafeteria with dinner at a fine restaurant? It's a question of what you can do with that game machine. If you can have an amazing experience, we believe price is not a problem."
-Ken Kutaragi, President and CEO of
Sony Computer Entertainment
Sony Computer Entertainment
I'm quite sure that future customers appreciate that comment. This is a real insult to anyone who doesn't have larger wallets than pockets. Too bad though, that it's only going to be internet-savvy gamers that get to read comments like this and relize just how much Sony are looking down on people. Besides, doesn't Ken Kutaragi ever make his own dinner at home?
"Sony has created the Playstation 3 (PS3), not as a game machine, but as a vessel to float the company into new lands. They are burdening the system with a new movie format (BluRay) unheard of levels of digital rights management for music and video, Memory Sticks and more.
The results are already starting to show. A year ago, Sony promised to launch the PS3 in Spring 2006. Instead, they waited till Spring 2006 to announce that they won’t be launching the system until November 2006, in Japan, with other regions perhaps as soon as Spring 2007. Why? Digital Rights Management issues with the upcoming BluRay format.
The other divisions of Sony are dragging the PS3 down. The Playstation Portable (PSP) suffers from the same illness; too many hands in the basket. The PSP was designed around a slow-loading UMD format for distribution of movies which makes the machine less than ideal for game playing. Compared to ROM cartridges, UMDs are too slow loading and consume too much battery time.They make the machine more fragile and introduce problems with additional moving parts. In short, they are a sacrifice to the movie industry arm of Sony; giving up on the optimal game experience for the opportunity to sell you movies you probably already own on DVD. Sony hopes that the PS3 will carry their formats of movie and music distribution will become the de-facto standard by attaching them to the PS3."
-Kamalot blog post, Sony's PS3 Ark
Sometimes, you come across blog gems like this, which speculate the movie industry's influence over Sony. They havn't only persuaded Sony lately, but even influenced politics into creating laws that turns millions of people into criminals.
Recently, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) got an update that allows FBI to wiretap suspected pirates and sentance them to prison up to ten years. I'm quite sure pirates is a bigger danger to sociaty than rapists, paedophiles and assaulters.
"For example assaulting a police officer will get you five years, downloading child porn will get you seven years, assaulting without a weapon will get you ten years and aggravated assault six years.
So in other words if you copy a Disney CD and sell it you will be in the same league as a paedophile who is distributing pictures of sexual attacks on children.
If you copy Craig David's CD you get ten years, but if you punch him in the face and pummel him into a seven day coma you will only get six. You are more likely to get the respect of the prison population with your six year sentence as well."
-Nick Farrell, The Inquirer, April 26th
Although, this law only aplies to Americans (where the movie industry got the biggest influence), it's a preview of what corporate future will hold. I'm for one is against restrictions like Digital Rights Management and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and it's not only because I'm a pirate myself, but because I want to be free to control and handle software in whatever way I want.
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